What If My Heart Stops Beating?

A comic by Dr Hemanth Naik, Senior Medical Research Scientist

Bypass Burgers: Eat Unto Death

I am sure most of you like burgers, rather LOVVVVVE burgers. Would you want to try triple bypass burger? It is available at Heart Attack Grill @ Las Vegas, Nevada. I stumbled upon this last week while researching for mutations related to cardiovascular disease.

Menu offered at Heart Attack Grill:

Single bypass burger, double bypass burger, triple bypass burger and much more.

Funny name right? Find out more what happens if you eat them regularly.

Interesting News on Heart Attack Grill

When you pass by a KFC or McDonald's joint, don’t you crave for a big, juicy hamburger, but thank your stars that you are in Malaysia, not USA, where you get a small sized burger and not like the one shown above. Contents inside the burgers can lead to an increased risk for heart disease if you have too many of them. Two main risk factors for heart disease are cholesterol and high blood pressure.

 The saturated fat and cholesterol in hamburgers can raise your blood cholesterol levels, which can increase your risk for heart disease. Ground beef has about 21 g total fat and 8 g saturated fat per 3-ounce serving. 

 High sodium intake is another risk factor leading to high blood pressure, and a hamburger loaded with cheese and condiments is very high sodium laden.

Coronary artery bypass surgery is a surgery performed to relieve angina(pain in the chest) caused due to blockage in arteries and reduce the risk of death . Arteries or veins from elsewhere in the patient's body are grafted to the coronary arteries to bypass the narrowed passages and improve the blood supply to the heart muscle. This surgery is usually performed with the heart stopped, often called off-pump" surgery. It requires a heart-lung bypass machine to circulate the blood and add oxygen. Bypass surgery is usually performed only when other treatments, such as medicine and angioplasty are not useful because of the location or extent of the blockage.

Number of bypasses

The terms single bypass, double bypass, triple bypass, quadruple bypass and quintuple bypass refer to the number of coronary arteries bypassed in the procedure. 

• a double bypass means two coronary arteries are bypassed (e.g. the left anterior descending coronary artery and right coronary artery. 

• a triple bypass means three vessels are bypassed 

• a quadruple bypass means four vessels are bypassed (e.g. LAD, RCA, LCX, first diagonal artery of the LAD) and

• quintuple means five. Bypass of more than four coronary arteries is uncommon.

Advice to all:

 Eat burgers only occasionally. Share a burger with your friend.

 Eat more vegetables with it.

 Control your craving for French fries. 

 Inculcate the habit of eating more vegetables and not burgers, in young children.

Dr Livy Alex, Head of Molecular Research Lab

What if My Engine Seizes…My Heart Stops?

I am a software engineer and I see my heart as an engineering marvel, a medical device with complex hardware components & an embedded software system.

Heart is the ‘motor pump’ which works tirelessly every day, every minute nay every second, for the entire duration of our lives, day after day, month after month, year after year. It does not ask for a break on weekends, casual leaves, and vacation. In fact even if our heart misses a single beat, we feel scared & think as to what happened.

Heart has  the most  efficient motor pump working relentlessly to keep our lives going on, to maintain the circulation incessant all our lives. The pacemaker and the nerves are similar to the ‘switch and the electrical wiring system’ of a medical device. Any disturbances or short circuit will cause rhythm upset ‘misfiring engine’ or cardiac arrest that is ‘engine seize’ making the machine to stop working.

Heart’s fuel supply is by the coronary arteries, this is similar to the multi-point-fuel injection of cars that keeps the engine running. Any partial blockage makes the engine to strain & get damaged, while complete blockage may switch off the pistons & the pump stops working.

The blood flow direction is maintained by ‘heart valves’ which work like non-return valves of an engine. They could get tight or loose due to infections/ heart disease that’s like the valves getting spoiled which may need replacement.

In software engineering we do ‘code reviews’ diligently so that the software doesn’t throw errors, this leads us to & ensures that timely action can be taken & preventive maintenance of the server can be done to keep the application running. The same can be done by us undergoing genetic/molecular testing to understand our DNA codes of the heart. Necessary life style changes; reduce weight, cut down salt, moderate fat intake, relaxation techniques have to be adopted so that we are proactive in our heart matters and not reactive implying, to take action only when we get hospitalized. These days’ young individuals even below the age of 30’s, are suffering from heart diseases and few very unfortunate ones are succumbing to sudden deaths at work places, at home, on the sports field.

We need to keep our hearts in a healthy state for it to keep pumping efficiently & effectively. We are so punctual with our car servicing schedule but we never bother about our Heart’s servicing and maintenance. We don’t take adequate preventive measures to ease its burden. The following are few of the preventive maintenance I can think of:

• We need to keep our weights in check so that

        o there is no ‘engine overload’.

• We need to keep our cholesterol in acceptable levels so that

        o our fuel supply system is not choked.

• We need to keep our blood pressure normal, eat less salt so that

        o ‘resistance’ of the system is optimal.

• We need to keep our lungs healthy, avoid smoking, do aerobic exercise so that

        o ‘air filters’ don’t get blocked.

Let us Take Care of our Hearts……for fear that it should not stop …

... then a heart shaped wreath will be placed on our chests.

Shiny John, Project Manager

About Cholesterol

The word "cholesterol" comes from the Greek word chole, meaning "bile", and the Greek word stereos, meaning "solid, stiff". 


Let's read some articles regarding CHOLESTEROL. 

1. Cholesterol by Dr Trisha Macnair

2. What is Cholesterol? What causes High Cholesterol?